Before I start I should mention that my Cavapoo, Violet, is tiny. She is under 6kg in weight and as you can see she is also adorable. As you can also see, the eReader in the photo is even tinier.

I wanted a Kobo mini many years ago, but never moved away from the Kindle at the time and it was only seeing this one for sale at £30 yesterday, including the box, paperwork and charger, that made me jump more than a decade later.

It is very out of date and needs some work to get it working with Wi-Fi and to connect to the Kobo bookstore.

You have to unscrew the back, remove the DS card, connect it to a laptop and then download a newer Glo OS to the Kobo card directory so that it will work.

I let everything transfer over an hour and then waited while it did all sorts of strange things, and then suddenly the Kobo store appeared. It was working!

It is ridiculously small and has no backlight, but I can genuinely see it being useful in certain situations. Instapaper works perfectly on it and I could imagine for many it would work well on train journeys etc.

There is something so special about the size of the device and the fact that it works just like my bigger Kobo, and I am amazed that it came out back in 2012.

All those years later we have attempts from the likes of Viwoods and Boox to make handheld e-ink devices that can present ebooks, connect to the internet and do so much more, but they are not good at all from what I have seen.

This simple little device that costs so little and which should not be useable in 2025 is an absolute joy. So glad I found it.

Categories: Books, Product Reviews, Retro